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Your Playstation is watching

At a UI conference held at the Almaden, California campus of IBM Research, Sony gave attendants a sneak peak at a camera interface schedule for release next year. The $49 add-on allows the Playstation to monitor the user with the possibility of manipulating on-screen characters through natural movement. Their intention is to win customers outside their primary demographic, though I'm unsure what attractiveness a 50 year old grandma will find in swinging a styrofoam baseball bat over controlling a game pad.

The camera's software will mix video images of an individual user with computer graphics to allow players to battle kung fu characters, play animated stereo systems or wash windows. In future games, users will wield passive colored styrofoam balls, plastic swords or gloves as a way to interact with characters, cast spells or control the action in a videogame scene.

If they can push a game like Bushido Blade out with a styrofoam Katana, I'm so there. This technology would seem a closer step toward real immersion. The problem there is in the visual interface. Controlling a character through hand movements and arm thrusts as one would expect the character to follow would be difficult in a 3D environment displayed in 2D. It seems to me that such technology would require VR display options before being fully functional. Still, it might make those stupid dance games a little more interesting and perhaps those that flail about, controller in hand, now will seem a little less silly.

What's more interesting to me is the actual UI possibilities in applications other than games. For some time, computer scientists have been pushing the idea of a computer that, through optical sensors, can interact more fluidly with its user. The fact that this system can identify motion, albeit with colored markers, and the like would seem the first real step toward such control. The EETimes article goes on with a few other tidbits from the conference like brain wave interfaces from NASA and a cellular UI for Ericsson phones that is individual driven rather than task driven. All in all, it's an interesting look at alternatives to our standard hand driven actions. I can't help but see my keyboard as an aging relic for which aliens will likely tease me.